Madonna Daughter Smoking, Pop Idol to Blame?
After catching her 15-year-old daughter Lourdes smoking, Madonna has admitted that she is not as tough on her daughter as she should be. Considering that the pop star recently released a music video in which she herself is smoking, others have suggested that Madonna is not as good of a role model as she should be.
Pictures of Lourdes smoking first circled on the Internet at the end of March and went viral. The teenager appeared to be taking a long drag prompting some to suggest that she was no rookie to having a smoke. As a result Madonna's parenting tactics were quick to come under scrutiny.
In a recent interview on NBC with Harry Smith, Madonna stated that she wasn't thrilled to discover that her daughter had been smoking and admitted that she was not always as strict as she should be.
"[I] wasn't very happy," the pop-star said on NBC's "Rock Center". "But honestly, I don't think I'm as tough as I should be. I think I need to be maybe tougher."
Madonna suggested that it was difficult to pick her battles when everyday seemed like a new challenge.
"It's hard, though. …Every day is a negotiation. But cigarette smoking I'm not very fond of, for anyone. I don't approve of anyone smoking cigarettes, most of all my daughter," she relayed.
Smith brought up the fact that it may be more difficult for Madonna to lecture her daughter about smoking when she herself is seen smoking in her newest video "Girl Gone Wild."
"I don't smoke. That's just an accessory, Harry. There's a difference," Madonna rebuked. "She smoked that cigarette before I did that video, so she didn't get that from me, OK?"
However, some mothers raised the question of how Madonna had served as a role model for other teen girls who idolized the pop queen by being seen smoking in her video.
"Serves her right," Debi Little Blake wrote on the USA Today blog. "When my daughter was young and she was a star, promoting a coffee table sex book, I was appalled. Young girls adored her then and she was a terrible role model."
"I think, if she is against smoking SO MUCH ! Then maybe, she should promote it in her video since a lot of people look up to her!" Debra Santos added.